But would it have exploded if you hadn’t been observing it?

Notice the direction of that backslash. What they were trying to do was 🐈^📦^ on the power of 📦, but I guess this formatting code doesn't apply to titles.

EDIT: ...or lemmy comments. Testing: (🐈^📦^)^📦^ - nevermind. So they tried to escape the exponential symbol with a backspace, but there was no need for it in lemmy, since it's coded differently here.